Lời cuối của Trẫm: According to Prince Sisowath Thomico, Sihanouk’s advisor, Sihanouk’s lat words to members of the royal family were: “To do good things to the [Khmer] society and to provide justice to all Khmer people”.

PHNOM PENH (Cambodia Herald) – The funeral for King Father Norodom Sihanouk, who died in Beijing Monday, is expected to be the biggest royal funeral in Cambodia in at least half a century, observers say.

A foreign historian, who asked not to be named, noted that Sihanouk’s mother Queen Sisowath Kossamak was the last senior member of the Cambodian royal family to die in 1975.

She died in Beijing, where Prince Sihanouk had been living in exile for five years, and her ashes were returned to Cambodia by the prince under Khmer Rouge escort.

The funeral for Sihanouk’s father, King Norodom Suramarit, who died in 1960, was a much more public affair.

His death on April 3 was greeted by a salvo of 66 cannon shots at 12:40 p.m., according to “A Nation in Mourning”, a special issue of Cambodian Commentary dated April-May, 1960.

16 October 2012 (Cambodia Herald) – King Father Norodom Sihanouk ascended the Tiananmen Gate Tower in central Beijing more times than any other foreign leader, Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

The report, citing China Central Television, said he walked up the tower with Chinese leaders on six occasions “which is the most compared with other heads of state.”

The late former king had close ties with all Chinese leaders since Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China in 1949